1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a supervisory control system, and in particular to a supervisory control system where an upper supervisory control terminal supervises and controls transmitting devices.
In a supervisory control system where an upper supervisory control terminal (OPS) and a plurality of transmitting devices (NE""s) communicate with LAN, DCC, or the like, it is required that an operator on the side of the upper supervisory control terminal recognizes states of the transmitting devices.
2. Description of the Related Art
Following two systems have been previously used for a system where an upper supervisory control terminal supervises transmitting devices through communication lines.
(1) As shown in FIG. 32, this is a system where when two transmitting devices NE1 and NE2, for example, are connected to an upper supervisory control terminal OPS with a communication line, the transmitting device NE1 sequentially notifies to the upper supervisory control terminal OPS state changes, i.e. a generation of an alarm A (501), a generation of an alarm B (502), a generation of an alarm C (503), a recovery of the alarm C (504), and a recovery of the alarm A (505). Similarly, the transmitting device NE2 sequentially notifies to the upper supervisory control terminal OPS a generation of an alarm D (506) and a generation of an alarm E (507). Namely, in such a supervisory control system, every time a state change occurs, the transmitting device issues a notification of the state change to the upper supervisory control terminal OPS in real time.
(2) As shown in FIG. 33, this is a system where the upper supervisory control terminal OPS reads the respective states of the transmitting devices NE1 and NE2. First, the upper supervisory control terminal OPS issues an alarm read (601) to the transmitting devices NE1 and NE2. In response, the transmitting device NE1 issues a notification (602) indicating that there is no alarm presently generated to the upper supervisory control terminal OPS. The transmitting device NE2 issues a notification (603) indicating that alarms D and E are being generated to the upper supervisory control terminal OPS.
Then, in the transmitting device NE1, a generation of an alarm A (604), a generation of an alarm B (605), a generation of an alarm C (606), a recovery of the alarm C (607), and a recovery of the alarm A (608) occur in the form of state changes. In the transmitting device NE2, a recovery of the alarm D (611) occurs in the form of a state change.
Hereafter, when an alarm read (609) is provided to the transmitting devices NE1 and NE2 from the upper supervisory control terminal OPS, a notification (610) indicating that the alarm B is being generated is issued from the transmitting device NE1 to the upper supervisory control terminal OPS, and a notification (612) indicating that the alarm E is being generated is issued from the transmitting device NE2 to the upper supervisory control terminal OPS.
Thus, a state read command is transmitted to the transmitting devices as required from the upper supervisory control terminal, and the transmitting device having received the read command notifies its own state change.
However, there were respective problems as follows in such prior art:
(1) When an alarm generation and an alarm recovery are repeated for a short time, so that many notifications (telegrams) frequently arise from the transmitting devices, the communication between the transmitting devices and the upper supervisory control terminal is congested.
(2) Faults generated may not be dealt with such that the upper supervisory control terminal can recognize only a present state of the transmitting devices at the time of reading, and an operator neither can determine whether or not the state of the transmitting devices has been changed in the meantime, nor can recognize alarms generated and recovered particularly before reading the state.
It is accordingly an object of the present invention to provide a supervisory control system where an upper supervisory control terminal supervises and controls transmitting devices, a congestion state of a communication line is reduced, and a state change having occurred can be accurately notified to the upper supervisory control terminal.
[1] In order to achieve the above-mentioned object, in a supervisory control system of claim 1 according to the present invention, an upper supervisory control terminal has two supervisory states, transmitting devices store state change information to be transmitted to the upper supervisory control terminal when the upper supervisory control terminal is in one supervisory state, and merge the state change information into a single message to be transmitted when the upper supervisory control terminal shifts to the other supervisory state.
Namely, in the present invention, an upper supervisory control terminal has a switchover function of supervisory states, and transitions between two supervisory states of a real time supervision and a non-real time supervision according to a supervisory state of an operator.
A transmitting device has a state (issue state) of notifying a state change in real time, and a state (issue suppression state) of not notifying a state change. Each transmitting device has a function of storing state changes during an issue suppression state period and of merging the stored state changes into a single message to be notified to the upper supervisory control terminal.
Such a technical concept will be described referring to an arrangement and an operation example of FIG. 1.
It is hereby supposed that an operator is located on the side of an upper supervisory control terminal OPS, and e.g. five transmitting devices NE1-NE5 are connected, through communication lines, to the upper supervisory control terminal OPS.
The upper supervisory control terminal OPS is firstly in the real time supervisory state, and supervises states (101-105) of the transmitting devices NE1-NE5. In the example of FIG. 1, the transmitting device NE1 is in a state (101) of no alarm being generated (no alarm generation). The transmitting device NE2 is similarly in a state (102) of no alarm generation. Also, the transmitting device NE3 is in a state (103) of an alarm F being generated (continuing alarm). The transmitting device NE4 is in a state (104) of continuing alarms G and H. The transmitting device NE5 is in a state (106) of no alarm generation.
If the operator performs a switchover (106) to the non-real time supervisory state with respect to the upper supervisory control terminal OPS, the upper supervisory control terminal OPS performs a suppression setting (107) of a state change notification to all of the transmitting devices NE1-NE5 to be supervised concurrently with the switchover (106) (claim 2).
Until the operator again executes a switchover (118) in order to perform the real time supervision and the upper supervisory control terminal OPS executes a suppression release (119), the transmitting devices NE1-NE5 preliminarily store the state changes respectively in e.g. a database.
Namely, in the example of FIG. 1, only notifications (108, 110, and 109) of the first state changes can be performed after the issue suppression (107) is set in the transmitting devices NE1-NE5, and the following state changes are stored in the database or the like (claim 3).
After the generation of the alarm A is notified (108) in the transmitting device NE1, as shown by a state change {circle around (1)} of a dotted line part, a generation (111) of an alarm B, a generation (112) of an alarm C, a recovery (113) of the alarm C, and a recovery (114) of the alarm A are stored in the database or the like. Also in the transmitting device NE2, after a generation of an alarm D is notified (110), as shown by a state change {circle around (2)} of the dotted line part, a generation (115) of an alarm E is stored in the database or the like. Furthermore, in the transmitting device NE4, after the recovery of the alarm G is notified (109), as shown in a state change {circle around (3)} of the dotted line part, a recovery (116) of the alarm H and a generation (117) of the alarm G are stored in the database or the like. As for the transmitting devices NE3 and NE5, since no state change occurs, there is no particular information to be stored in the database.
Thus, after storing the state changes {circle around (1)}-{circle around (3)} in the database or the like, the upper supervisory control terminal OPS performs the suppression release (119) based on the switchover (118) by the operator, and executes a state read (120) for the transmitting devices NE1-NE5.
However, since the generation and the recovery of the alarm are notified only to the transmitting devices NE1, NE2, and NE4 in this case, as mentioned above, the upper supervisory control terminal OPS has only to execute the state read (120) to these transmitting devices NE1, NE2, and NE4 (claim 4).
The transmitting devices NE1, NE2, and NE4 having received the command of the state read (120) transmit state changes during the suppression in the form of a single message.
Namely, the transmitting device NE1 makes a notification (121) of the state change {circle around (1)}, the transmitting device NE2 makes a notification (122) of the state change {circle around (2)}, and the transmitting device NE4 makes a notification (123) of the state change {circle around (3)}.
The upper supervisory control terminal OPS stores the received state changes {circle around (1)}-{circle around (3)} during the suppression period in e.g. an alarm database to return to the real time supervisory state for the transmitting devices.
Namely, the transmitting device NE1 assumes a state (124) of continuing the alarm B, the transmitting device NE2 assumes a state (125) of continuing the alarms D and E, the transmitting device NE3 assumes a state (126) of continuing the alarm F, the transmitting device NE4 assumes a state (127) of continuing the alarm H, and the transmitting device NE5 assumes a state (128) of no alarm generation, so that these states are supervised in real time.
Thus, it becomes possible to decrease the number of messages issued to the upper supervisory control terminal from the transmitting devices. Also, the upper supervisory control terminal and the transmitting devices have a control function concerning the notification during the suppression so that the first state change may be notified from the transmitting devices within a supervisory network, even after the upper supervisory control terminal and the transmitting devices assume the non-real time supervisory state. Therefore, it becomes possible to recognize the state change within the supervisory network even if an operator does not read a state one by one.
[2] In the supervisory control system of claim 5 according to the present invention, as in the above-mentioned principle [1], the upper supervisory control terminal has two supervisory states, and as for the processing from the issue suppression of the state change information in transmitting devices to the suppression release, on condition that the upper supervisory control terminal autonomously receives the first state change information from any transmitting device after an operator switches over the supervisory state of the upper supervisory control terminal, the state change from the issue suppression setting to its suppression release may be stored in the database or the like, as shown in the above-mentioned principle [1].
This will be described by the example of FIG. 2. It is supposed that the transmitting devices NE1-NE5 are firstly in a real time supervisory state corresponding to the states (101-105) shown in FIG. 1.
If the operator instructs the upper supervisory control terminal OPS a switchover (206) to the non-real time supervisory state in such a real time supervisory state, the upper supervisory control terminal OPS, different from the case in FIG. 1, does not immediately set the issue suppression in the transmitting devices NE1-NE5.
Thereafter, a state change (generation of alarm A) occurs in a certain transmitting device within the network, in the transmitting device NE1 in this case, so that a state change notification (207) is provided to the upper supervisory control terminal OPS.
The upper supervisory control terminal OPS having received this notification (207) performs a suppression setting (208) of the state notification to all of the transmitting devices NE1-NE5 to be supervised.
After this issue suppression setting (208), none of the transmitting devices NE1-NE5 issues the state change notifications, so that these state changes are stored in the database or the like.
In the example of FIG. 2, a state change {circle around (4)} substantially corresponding to the state change {circle around (1)} shown in FIG. 1 is stored in the database or the like in the transmitting device NE1. In the transmitting device NE2, a generation (213) of the alarm D and a generation (214) of the alarm E are stored in the database or the like in the form of a state change {circle around (5)}. In the transmitting device NE4, a recovery (215) of the alarm G, a recovery (216) of the alarm H, and a generation (217) of the alarm G are stored in the database or the like in the form of a state change {circle around (6)}.
If the operator again performs a state switchover (218) of the upper supervisory control terminal OPS for performing the real time supervision setting, the upper supervisory control terminal OPS transmits, concurrently with the switchover (218), a command of a suppression release (209) to all of the transmitting devices NE1-NE5, and transmits a command of a state read (220) for reading state changes {circle around (4)}-{circle around (6)} from the issue suppression (208) to the suppression release (209).
In this case, it is unknown what state changes are occurring in the transmitting devices. Therefore, it is preferable for the upper supervisory control terminal OPS to read the state change information during the issue suppression period from all of the transmitting devices to be supervised (claim 6).
As a result, the transmitting devices NE1-NE5 having received the command of the read (220) make notifications (221-225) of the state changes during the suppression period in the form of a single message.
The upper supervisory control terminal OPS stores the received state changes during the issue suppression period in e.g. an alarm history database to return to the real time supervisory state. Real time supervisory states (226-230) in this case correspond to the states (124-128) shown in FIG. 1 for the transmitting devices NE1-NE5 in the upper supervisory control terminal OPS.
[3] In the supervisory control system of claim 7 according to the present invention, in either of the above-mentioned principles [1] and [2], concurrently with the issue suppression to the transmitting devices being released from the upper supervisory control terminal, the transmitting devices autonomously notify the state change information stored during an issue suppression period.
This will be described referring to FIG. 3. After the upper supervisory control terminal OPS provides an issue suppression terminal (301) to the transmitting devices NE1 and NE2, a state change {circle around (7)} (302-305) is stored in the database or the like in the form of the state change information as mentioned above in the transmitting device NE1. Thereafter, when an issue suppression release (306) is provided to the transmitting devices NE1 and NE2, the transmitting device NE1 no sooner receives the command than 5autonomously notifies (307) the above-mentioned state change {circle around (7)} even if there is no read command. Since storing no state change information in this case, the transmitting device NE2 does not perform an autonomous notification.
[4] In the supervisory control system of claim 8 according to the present invention, in any one of the above-mentioned principles [1]-[3], messages stored during the issue suppression period are separated according to a priority to be notified.
This will be described referring to FIG. 4. First, the upper supervisory control terminal OPS executes an issue suppression (401) to the transmitting device NE.
Based on this, the transmitting device NE stores a state change (402) of the alarm generation, the alarm recovery, or the like during the suppression period in the database or the like.
The operator switches over the supervisory state of the upper supervisory control terminal OPS, so that an issue suppression release (403) from the upper supervisory control terminal OPS for the transmitting device NE is set. If a command of a state read (404) is further transmitted, the transmitting device NE firstly makes a notification (405) of an alarm with a priority generated or recovered during the issue suppression. Then, the transmitting device NE makes a notification (406) of an alarm with a lower priority generated and recovered during the issue suppression.
It is to be noted that as an example the above-mentioned one supervisory state comprises a non-real time supervisory state, and the other supervisory state comprises a real time supervisory state (claim 9).